Racial Stereotypes

This study focuses on the influence of racial information on the agents’ decision-making in economic interactions based on game theory: more specifically, the ultimatum game (UG) and the dictator game (DG). We adopted the experiment as our research strategy, and we introduced a new treatment in which we indirectly revealed the race of a subject’s counterpart to each player. We found that, in the ultimatum game (UG), the “Proposers” made a higher offer to players identified as African and Asian descendants, while lower offers were made to Europeans. When we repeated the experiment using the dictator game (DG), only African descendants received higher transfers. We observed that distinct reasons guided the decision-making process in both games and racial stereotypes showed its relevance to economic interactions. Prosocial concerns increased transfers made to those of African descent in both games, while a more self-regarding feeling guided the transfers to the white participants. Transfers made to Asians were divergent: they were higher in UG but lower in DG revealing strategic reasons related to the game splits. Data are related to the game experiment.

本研究聚焦于基于博弈论，尤其是最终通牒游戏（UG）与独裁者游戏（DG），探讨种族信息对经济互动中智能体决策的影响。具体而言，本研究采用实验法作为研究策略，并在实验中引入了一种新的处理方法，即通过对每位参与者间接揭示其对手的种族身份。研究发现，在最终通牒游戏中，对被识别为非洲和亚洲后裔的参与者，提议者提出了更高的出价，而对欧洲人的出价则较低。当我们使用独裁者游戏重复实验时，只有非洲后裔接受了更高的转账。观察结果显示，两种游戏中的决策过程均受到不同原因的引导，种族刻板印象在经济互动中显现出其相关性。在两种游戏中，对非洲后裔的转账均因利他主义关怀而增加，而对白人参与者的转账则更多地受到自我关照情感的引导。对亚洲人的转账则呈现出差异：在最终通牒游戏中较高，而在独裁者游戏中较低，这揭示了与游戏分叉相关的策略性原因。数据与游戏实验相关。